There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling… “

—

Aldous Huxley

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Life truths.

Hard and lightly.

Haste with patience.

Forward diagonally.

Happy and sad.

Success and failure.

Right and wrong.

Thinking and doing.

Dreams and hard work.

Whew. This means that the truly great things in Life may be a coin you can put in your pocket — a coin made up of two sides and two faces.

Yeah. Life is usually a combination of opposites fighting a tug of war moment to moment. I bet no one told you that. Far too often we are told the secret to life is one thing. Far too often someone is not telling is the truth <or maybe they don’t really know the secret to life?>.

Th truth is Life <and business also> is a wonderful, maddening blob of inconsistency.

The only way to survive , and not be totally boring, inept or a hermit, is to steal a little of something from both sides and do your best to balance it all out in the end.

Balance?

I need some sadness to recognize true joy <only I certainly don’t want to dwell on sadness nor walk around as Happy the Clown every minute of the day>.

I want a leader who is energetic and demanding and cajoling, pushing, shoving, pulling, inspiring people toward a horizon < but I want the moments of idle strength and compassion intertwined>.

I want to work hard … so hard the muscles, brain and/or physical, are strained and hurt … and get to maybe get a glimpse of one of my dreams on occasion <so I can dream a little when not working hard>.

I want people to play hard and play to win <in any endeavor> … but do so with grace in victory & loss, with sportsmanship & fairness and respect for the game.

I want … well … it doesn’t matter what I want. Pick your ‘hard-lightly’ Life combination. I guarantee you will find the most interesting people, most interesting experiences, most interesting moments, most interesting anythings … are a reflection of this ying-yang combination. Life is meant to be lived, and experienced, hard & lightly.

Now. By the way.

Just because Life is meant to be lived this way doesn’t mean it is easy to actually live it that way. Living hard, or living lightly, is not only addictive but also often generates a sense of ‘lostness’ when shelved for a bit.

Why lostness?

Well. It is mostly fear that we will not refind or regain it … therefore we hesitate to ever let it go from the way we currently live our Life.

So what do we do? We ‘take a break.’

We ‘get away from it all.’ In other words instead of seeking some ‘how we actually live’ balance in our lives we just step away from the way we live our Life by simply not going lightly <if we typically go hard> or not going go hard <if we typically go lightly> … we don’t do anything other than how we live our Life … we just choose to do nothing to ‘recharge.’

I would suggest that you don’t need to ‘take a break’ to recharge but rather if you seek the ‘yang’ to your ‘ying’ … well .. you will find additional purpose as well as your ‘ying’ takes on an entirely new image n your eyes & mind.

Regardless … just approaching Life one way means you miss out on what is most interesting in life … going hard & lightly.

Aw shit. Look. All I really know if that if you can figure out how to go hard … and tread lightly at the same time … you will most likely be successful in business & in Life. You will most likely be appreciated, respected, sometimes liked and certainly not hated. I know … I know … the ‘tread lightly’ part is really really hard if you like to live Life going hard.

But.

As I just told someone … go hard for the things you want and dreams you seek to reach toward and if you continue to do these things for you, knowing that your moral compass is set correctly and that your instincts with regard to ‘what is right’ versus ‘what is wrong’ are good, you will be happier and the people around you will rarely be disappointed.

Seek and you will find may be one of the most misleading sayings of all time.

<I say this with apologies to Matthew who said in the bible … “ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” … in other words .. God can always be found, but must be sought out>

Except for faith, seeking doesn’t guarantee you will find shit. That is not to say there isn’t beauty in the seeking. Seeking is actually like a free ticket on a rollercoaster ride of thoughts. Every day you step onto the rollercoaster where it is an entirely new ride with an entirely new thrill with new heights and ups, downs, overs and unders. Whether you consider this a thrill or not <or simply ‘angst’> you also encounter the thrill of losing, finding, uncovering, discovering as well as expectations met and unmet. Yet, I would like to note, 99.999% of the time you survive the rollercoaster and get up the next day and get on again.

Seeking, in and of itself, can be maddeningly exhilarating and disappointing.

I have always believed you should not only surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but you should also surround yourself with dreams and doing and believing and thinking. But, as a seeker myself, suffice it to say, I have screwed myself over many more times than anyone else ever has or will <if I were to judge myself on the ‘find’ aspect>. I try and find some solace in the discovery scientific research suggests that seeking something actually more often translates into not finding.

Holy shit.That sucks.

This means the more we search for something, the more likely we are to NOT find it. No wonder ‘seek and you shall find’ is a bullshit piece of advice. This actually means seeking, in some form or fashion, may stand in the way of our discovering the truth <ponder that for a second>.

Why could that be? Well. Seeking has some goal in mind. Seeking has something it wants to find. But maybe most importantly … seeking is more often than not rooted in some expectations. And these expectations create some tensions which inevitably hurt you <although they are mostly survivable>. Life typically creates several bars of expectations we all have to navigate as we seek not only answers but being the best version of ourselves.

There are societal expectations. These are most usually absurdly high expectations of which few actually attain. And even if attainable are not attainable on any consistent basis. Therefore, even if you do attain it most likely is a brief glimpse of ‘meeting some absurd expectation which makes me feel fucking great if but only for a moment or two.’

There are personal expectations. Surprisingly these are actually more realistic expectations. Most of us know who and what we are and, in general, know what we are capable of. We set some expectations which are ‘high’ <because we all like to reach and grow and be better tomorrow than we are today> but they are not as absurdly high as the societal expectations. The good news? We attain these on occasion. And we feel pretty good about it <assuming we ignore the absurd societal expectations … and people permit us to ignore the societal expectations>.

There are, well, reality expectations. Reality is reality. Reality ignores what you wish and what you want and simply says “in this time & place this is what is attainable.” Basically reality doesn’t give a shit about what you want or how you set your expectations or even acknowledges any society bullshit … it just is what it is.

By the way we far too often ignore this last one.

Regardless. Expectations are a real sonuvabitch. But if you agree with what I just wrote they are a multi dimensional sonuvabitch. Trying to align these three things in your head is really difficult. Your brain ends up in a weird three way tug of war where truly the only thing that happens is it hurts.

Look.

I am a seeker. I seek information and knowledge and learning in an insatiable quest for more. And maybe because my greater expectation resides solely in ‘more’ I really am not hurt that often in any expectation game. What I mean by that is ‘see and you shall find’ implies … well … some destination … some specific ‘thing to be found.’ With ‘more’ as my destination … well … I have no specific destination.

Aw, shit, what a bunch of philosophical mumbo jumbo bullshit that looks like when I reread it.

Let’s just say expectations are a sonuvabitch. Period. Expectations most likely create more personal pain & angst than anything I can think of off the type of my head. That said. Expectations, most often, are survivable.

Aw shit, what do I know?

Well. Probably not much more tan what I have shared. But I would suggest that in the end your soul, the essence of your character and who and what you are, has the ability to see the subtle beautiful triumphs over expectations that the eyes often miss. So maybe close your eyes on occasion … maybe then you will see how what you simply saw as ‘survive’ was actually a triumph over expectations.